Publishing, Visibility, and Why It's Been a While

Hey, y'all! Long time no see!

Clunky intro aside, it's been a hot minute (or, you know, three years) since my last update, so I figured it was time to brush off the ol blog login information and put together some words about what I've been doing and all other manner of writerly things.

The short version is that, in the time since we last spoke, I:

• Wrote another manuscript (and am currently editing it)

• Went to 3 anime conventions in cosplay

• Got a full-time job as a content marketer for a healthcare startup

• Adopted another cat

• Gave a TEDx talk on fandom, friendship and social belonging

• Started drafting a nonfiction book, just for funsies

• Enrolled in another degree program

• Earned Google's project management certificate

• Moved to California to be closer to my doctors

• Got formally diagnosed with Lyme disease

• Also got formally diagnosed with anxiety (not a shock), depression (ditto) and ADHD (a shock to me, but apparently not anyone else)

So...yeah, it's been a busy one. In the midst of all this, I keep thinking about writing. And going back to writing. And wondering if trad pub will ever work out for me. The usual.

As a slight aside, I recently had a publishing-adjacent win; a piece of mine was picked up by Fast Company! I wrote about disclosing my chronic illness in the workplace and what I learned from that experience. Check it out here, if you're so inclined.

I'll be honest, querying kinda sucked my soul – to the point where I unceremoniously shelved my manuscript about a year and a half ago. That isn't to say I'll never recirculate it again; I think, as the tides of the market change, you can never truly say never. I also have loose plans to pick it up and revise some sections through the lens of an older, wiser version of me. In that, I think I'm lucky; once a book is published and out in the world, the words remain forever frozen in time, a mirror of who the author was when it was written. As long as Jess's story remains in my hands, I can still meld the words into the most accurate reflection of the story I want to tell.

I've also started revising a second manuscript – think Arcane's gaslamp world, sisterly feuds and unapologetic queerness + the enemies-to-lovers and gangster vibes of THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS. As the older sister of a sister, this story is one that offers up a lot of myself; it's also super gay and contains a couple casual blink-and-you'll-miss-it nods to one of my favorite books (Tamsyn Muir's NONA THE NINTH) which are mostly just there for my own enrichment. Clara (this story's protagonist) embodies the stressful weirdness of coming of age in unprecedented times, and I hope that maybe, one day, you'll get to meet her too.

Amidst all this, I still grapple with the topic of disclosure. I've seen stories of people talking about their WIPs and landing agent representation or publication as a result. I don't know if that's a sign for me to do more of the same, or if I'd drive myself nuts trying to make a process public that I'm so used to keeping private. In therapy, I often return to the concept of "moving in silence," which, to me, means keeping the work to myself and only showing the results. Mostly, this is because I don't have the energy to do the whole "building in public" thing, but maybe if I give myself permission to unleash my full chaotic energies in the pursuit of storytelling, things will bloom from that effort. Who knows...

Bottom line is this: I still love storytelling and I want to be a trad-pubbed author one day. Will this ever happen? Who knows. But I owe it to myself to try, and to treat this as an earnest pursuit instead of a casual hobby. So here I am. It's good to be back :)